Marsalis, Wynton: Blues Symphony (Symphony No. 2) (2009) 30'
for orchestra

Scoring
3(1 picc).3(1 hrnA).3(1 bcl).3(1 cbssn).tsax-4.3.3(1 btbn).1-timp.perc(4)-strings

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Programme Note  
Symphony No. 2 Blues Symphony

This piece celebrates the blues through the prism of different moments in American history.It incorporates the call and responses, train whistles, stomp-down grooves, big city complexities and down-home idiosyncrasies of Afro American and American music.  Like most New Orleans musicians, I grew up surrounded by vernacular music and love the plain-spokenness of it all.My writing process is rooted in the tradition of Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton. I've had the good fortune to study their scores and review their compositional methods.  I'm very conscious of maintaining devices like the chorus format, timed call and responses, rhythm breaks, vertical voicing, and New Orleans style polyphony. Though these particular jazzmen have no tradition of serious composition for symphonic orchestra, their methods of presenting and developing material are fully home-grown and very successful. The discoveries of Gershwin, Bernstein, Copland, Still, Grofé and Riddle amongst others, provide a workable tradition of embracing vernacular musical achievements and amplifying them with skillful symphonic orchestration.  I want to play and write as much of our root music (with the sensibility of a jazzman of course) as I can – Anglo, Afro and Hispanic American songs; fiddle tunes and folk melodies; hymns and popular songs as well as rhythms like the Western Shuffle, Boogie-woogie, Crescent City 2-beat, various claves and so on - hard earned grooves that give our music the richness and natural feeling that make it likable, danceable, romantic and identifiable…music which is, by this time, universal and the rightful province of all musicians everywhere regardless of background or acculturation.

I am largely untutored in orchestral writing, and the orchestra is a very sophisticated instrument, an instrument that commands a lot of respect.  I tend to use my natural hearing and love of what the various instruments like to do and can do to guide my process. I also try to figure out how to write parts that musicians will want to play. I'm always an orchestra or band member at heart. I love playing. Playing is a very social activity. Composing, however, is a long personal meditation. You need mental isolation to figure things out.

When I compose, I like to have a small, desolate room with a piano.  I start to think and get the energy built up over time. Ideas generally come to me when waking up and going to bed. I always wake up with a lot of ideas. When I'm on the road - no piano, no room - the buildup of energy has to be internal...it's a lot harder.

The Blues Symphony is comprised of 7 movements, each in the form of 12 bar blues choruses with some variations and times, and each with a specific sound and historic reference point.

Mvmt. 1:  March. The Revolutionary War is considered here.  It is full of twinkling sounds which represent dawn and refer to the fife and drums, fiddle reels, bagpipes and syncopated promises of America. Features a lot of fluting.

Mvmt. 2: Spiritual.  The blues is found in church music and ragtime, but it was born as a sound in the spiritual. This movement begins with sweeping waves. It is Africans being shipped to America for many years. The ship gives way to the sound of a fiddle tune which is American slaves expressing a joyous dance feeling through the mixture of African and Celtic traditions.  Finally, the music moves into an introspective and optimistic theme on the tenor sax symbolizing the spiritual strength that still survives in the soulful moan of so many tenor saxophones. It ends with the trumpet because we begin and end things. (That's what the Bible says).

Mvmt 3: Ragtime. This movement is led by the strings. It's in the key of Db like Joplin's “Maple Leaf Rag” and begins as a waltz. In New Orleans, the early ragtime bands played marches, waltzes, schottische and other dances. The waltz transitions into ragtime. The middle choruses feature a trio section up a perfect fourth as in many traditional marches. The last choruses are written to Jelly Roll Morton's “King Porter Stomp” harmonic turnaround. As the turnaround repeats, this movement builds to a shout chorus, train whistle, New Orleans stomp-riff- last march strain-Sousa stride tag. Or something like that. I think.

Mvmt. 4:  Blues.  It starts with a brass in a moaning style chorale in Eb. Then a modulation to E, the favorite key of itinerant guitarists the world over. Each chorus features a different American root groove.

• First - regular 4/4 swing.
• Second - stride.
• Third - Western shuffle.
• Fourth - train shuffle.
• Fifth - church 12/8.
• Sixth - Boogie-woogie 6/8.
• Seventh - sound of chorale. The tag features a Charleston rhythm and a train station call.

Mvmt 5: This is 4/4 swing with blocks of sounds and silence. In jazz we call the silences 'breaks'.  It's New York City, concrete, steel and glass.  There are many percussive elements. The families of the orchestra call and respond to each other. Brass to woodwinds to brass to strings to brass to percussion. Of course, brass is boss. This is a big orchestration with many chords, but it's still with the form of the blues.  The key changes at every chorus, and it ends with a primitive groove in reverence to the contemporary nightlife of the most sophisticated city in the world.
Mvmt 6: Danzón. This movement combines Monk's harmonic technology and Cachao's music.  The music moves from danzón into mambo, then habanera, and finally choro - a Brazilian music form which features a danceable off-beat ground rhythm and an exciting bass-treble dialog. Choro is the cousin of ragtime so this section is also in the key of Db.

Mvmt 7:  This is all contemporary.  I like the reconciliation of opposites: a man and a woman.  This movement is conversations between the genders.  There is a low part talking to the high part. They argue and then get along, argue and get along.  Both parts are very complicated. Some of the lines are harmonized in half-steps (the ultimate gender metaphor because the closest physical and melodic notes in our system (half-steps) are the furthest apart harmonically). It's fast, goes through many keys and has very thick, conversational harmony.  The background rhythm of this movement is influenced by Freddie Green, the great rhythm guitarist of the Count Basie Orchestra.  When I was in my early 20s, Freddie would tell me, "Keep the dignity in the music, stay well dressed and keep dealing with your thing." The rhythm guitar part is the guts of the music.  This 'every beat' rhythmic and harmonic pad was also a principal feature of music in the classical period.  Freddie used to move his part around and create little internal melodies. I adapted this technique for the spine of this movement.  I almost never play my horn when I'm writing.  I stick to singing parts or playing them on the piano.  I had to play these melodies to ensure the complete originality and complexity and poetry of the melodic language.